


The Sled

by salazars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, dramione christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 05:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12881610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazars/pseuds/salazars
Summary: A Christmas Dramione story that involves a sled. What a great summary :D





	The Sled

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Ok, so I have no idea who nominated me and why (I was sure for some time that it was a mistake) - but I feel so honoured! I was very happy to write this story and I hope it will be a good Christmas gift for all of you lovely Dramione shippers ♥ 
> 
> I want to say a special thank you to my Beta for this story and a very good, dear friend - Colubrina. I'm sure you all know her, and I'm so lucky she betaed my little entry.My Christmas wish for all of you is to have a friend like I have in her ♥

Hermione looked down the slope of the mountain, her eyes watering from the wind. She saw people at the foot playing in the snow and heard distant laughter. 

Something tugged on her wrist and she looked down. The sled she was holding by the rope, wrapped around her hand, slid down the hill and hung there, waiting. Hermione pulled it back up and pushed it farther away on flat ground. Not today.

“Hermione!” 

She turned towards Harry's voice. He was looking out of the open door of his winter house, wrapped in a blanket.

“Come home, it's too cold! Ginny made hot chocolate.”

Hermione started walking to the house, pulling the sled with her limp wrist. In the back of her hazy mind she wondered when would the others come back in.

***

They all sat around the fireplace, snuggled in blankets and wooly socks, sipping hot chocolate. Harry and Ginny occupied the couch, Ron sat near Lavender’s feet on the floor, and Luna and Theo played chess on the carpet. It was a picture of serenity, winter bliss crackling in the hearth. 

Hermione sat alone in a large antique armchair. She clung to one side of it, leaving half the seat empty, big enough for another person. Her gaze was focused on something distant and unseen, her chocolate getting cold.

A soft click of wood on wood pulled Hermione out of her thoughts and she looked over at Theo, as he smiled triumphantly. 

“Check!” He announced.

Luna hummed.

Hermione waved her hand over the mug, heating up the chocolate. But soon she forgot about it again and it got cold.

Hermione heard wind howling outside and looked to the window. The thick layer of snow that fell on the frame was dusted off in one place, and she could just see the snowflakes. It was already dark, but Hermione felt the urge to run out of the house in her socks and a sweater and stand at the top of the mountain, hidden away from the whole world, and wait.

“Do you guys want to watch a film? I brought us some Christmas classics.” Harry asked.

“For muggles maybe,” Ron grumbled.

“Oh come on, I want to watch. We saw that one about the family forgetting their boy, it was fun.” Lavender said.

Nobody else protested, and Luna had just beaten Theo at chess, so Harry went to get the DVD and magically project it onto the wall for everyone. 

Hermione observed the exchange, quietly grateful to have her friends at this time. The Christmas decorations around them - fairy lights on the stairwell and around every door, a big tree in the corner, lots of wrapped presents under it - while making everyone else feel joy - pinned her down to the ground. The soft happiness of December that everyone in the world feels every year was a dark and heavy ache for Hermione. Her friends tried to distract her from it as best as they could, but she always stayed in her own mind, darkening every day. 

She stretched out her legs and swung them over the opposite armrest of her chair. She couldn’t let go of the feeling this simple movement reminded her of, and felt a strong desire to cry.

“All done!” Harry clapped his hands together.

“Oh, wait, I’ll get some snacks.” Ginny said, darting to the kitchen.

 

They sat in their usual places, Hermione still in the enormous armchair, and watched A Christmas Carol. Lavender absolutely loved it and was so emotional during the length of the film, that Ginny couldn’t stop teasing her. Ron tried to stand up for his girlfriend, but it was no use - Ginny was relentless. Luna and Theo were quietly snuggled in a blanket, and glancing over at them, Hermione noticed how Theo watched Luna more than the screen and how he kept playing with her hair. Hermione pulled her legs up, trying to collapse into herself.

When the film ended Hermione was positively exhausted. She couldn't relax, she kept thinking, her legs got uncomfortably long all of a sudden, preventing her from finding a comfortable position. Harry and Ginny were both asleep, Ron and Lavender went to bed half an hour ago and Luna and Theo played chess again. Nobody ever held it against the others that the films became forgotten before the end - they were happy spending Christmas in that little mountain house, snowed in and inattentive.

Hermione went to her room without waking anyone up. She put on her pajamas, climbed into her big bed and closed her eyes. She didn't fall asleep until the very morning, right when new snow started falling, covering up footsteps that circled around the house.

***

She stood at the top of the mountain again, the sled near her feet. It was a very cold day, and everyone but Hermione stayed inside. Standing at her usual vigil, she considered staying at Harry's winter house after Christmas and coming here to the slope every day, until the snow melted in the spring.

She looked into the trees that stood at both sides of the wide valley below. There was nothing there. It was too cold.

She heard the front door open and close, and then someone walking towards her on the fresh snow. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Hermione?”

“Hey, Ron.”

“Hey,” he stood next to her, pulling on his scarf, “You wanna maybe come inside?”

“Not really,” she said, her voice bleak.

“Hermione… come on. Let's go have some tea.”

“Maybe later.” She turned to face him and smiled wanly. 

Ron looked her dead in the eyes and with a sudden determination and anger, that rushed up from being bottled up for a year, he said.

“He's not coming back.” 

Hermione looked down. She tugged on the string and the sled moved. 

“He's not coming back.” Ron repeated.

“I heard you.“ Hermione said. She wasn't going to fight with Ron.

“Christmas is tomorrow. Let's just go back home. Let's all go to my parent's, we can have a nice family Christmas.”

She didn't answer.

“Please, Hermione!” Ron begged. “We can't see you suffering like this. He's not coming back!”

“Ron,” she said softly, “I don't care what you or the others think. You can be upset with me or try to get me to leave, but I'm staying here. I'll stay here for the rest of my life if needed. Frankly, I can't believe I ever actually left!”

“How can you be so sure…”

“Because he promised!” she said, her voice low, gripping the string of the sled tightly.

“Yeah, but he might be de…”

“Shut up! Oh, Ronald, i didn't want to fight, but you are insufferable. Leave me alone, please.”

He went back into the house, red and angry, and didn't let anyone else come out to try and talk sense into Hermione. Let her freeze there.

***

She couldn't sleep again. She stared at the ceiling, at the conjured up constellations that helped her sleep when she was in Hogwarts - but now they only annoyed her. Her mind couldn't stop, and she gave up, finally going to the kitchen for a drink.

Hermione made herself some hot chocolate and perched on the counter.

Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.

She held onto the mug, letting her fingers absorb the warmth of it, and thought of tomorrow. A year has passed since he’d had to run. A year has passed since she saw him get hit with a curse. A year has passed since their last night together and his promise “I will come back, on Christmas. I promise, Hermione.”

Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.

***

They ran out of the house at noon, when the sun started shining on the mountaintop, to build a snowman. Luna prohibited the use of magic and made everyone use their hands. Theo and Ron agreed that this was barbaric.

Hermione felt almost happy as she, Luna and Ginny shaped complicated robes for their snow-witch. Her elevated state dipped though, when it started getting dark - the fairylights on the house lit up, reminding her of everything once again.

“You must be really sad today, Hermione,” Luna said, “It's been a year since Draco left.”

Luna was trying to mold a hat for their creation, and she said those horrible with words with her usual air of delivering hurtful truths like it was a weather observation. Hermione didn't get upset, she knew Luna meant well. She saw everything differently, and sometimes Hermione wondered if Luna felt pain the same way she did.

“I am sad,” she replied.

“Would you like to leave? It might make you feel better.”

“No, Luna, it won't. I'm staying.”

“Are your still waiting?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I think you should.”

“Didn't you just tell me leaving would make it better?” Hermione smiled.

“I did. But it was just a favour for Ginny. I think you should wait. And so does Theo.”

“Really?” Hermione raised her eyebrows. She saw Harry and Ginny run into the house, all covered in snow and laughing.

“Yes. He lost a friend. So he's waiting for him to come back too”

 

***

Hermione put the last presents that she forgot in her room under the Christmas tree and sat in her usual armchair with a book. She couldn't concentrate on her reading and kept looking at the tree. There was a heap of boxes and packages, beautiful and sparkling. Everyone had a gift for everyone, and Hermione packed one extra. She didn't exactly forget that one in her room - she didn't put it out until the last moment because she didn't want the pitying looks and angry huffs.

The decorations were magnificent, but their distraction was like an optical illusion, that is puckered in one moment, and in the next it looks puckered out. The twinkling lights and tinsel made her feel the winter magic in one moment, and black grief in the next. The tree was full of fairy lights and glitter, enchanted toys and figurines gently floating around it. Two small wooden bullfinches sat in the branches and chirped holiday songs. It made her sad, because there were two of them.

Hermione gave up on her book, and got up from the armchair. She pulled her coat and boots on, wrapped a long fuzzy scarf around her neck and went out on the porch. Her sled stood there, the only thing not covered in snow. She pulled at its string and pushed it with her foot. It slid off the porch into the soft, pristine snow. Hermione stepped into it too, savoring the tender crunch, crunch, crunch of freshly fallen white blanket. She walked to her usual spot, not looking under her feet, not noticing how the snow was footworn closer to the slope.

She stood there. It wasn't terribly cold anymore, and for a second she wanted to lay down in a snow pile and sleep. 

She looked at the sled. 

“I hate you,” she said to it.

She sat down on the cold wooden seat, and pulled her legs up. She could actually fall asleep like that. She put her head on her knees and closed her eyes. The last time she sat on this bloody sled was with him, a year ago, right before all hell broke lose. 

She remembered how he hugged her, nuzzling her neck as the sled rolled down the mountain, enchanted to keep in a straight line and steady pace. 

It started getting chilly, but Hermione didn’t want to move. She felt determined to sit there until morning and die of cold or disappointment. She thought the sled moved a bit, but it was probably the same trick her mind played on her when she felt she was falling, when she was only falling asleep.

“Come back,” she murmered into her lap.

She was exhausted with grief and frozen to the sled. She wasn’t terribly cold, but she instantly felt the shift in temperature when something broad and warm pressed to her back.

The sled moved for sure this time, and gently slipped down the mountain. It kept at a steady pace and went in a straight line.

Hermione felt drowsiness leave her, as two arms circled around her waist.

“Am I dead?” she whispered.”

“No,” she heard Draco say right into her ear.

“Are you dead?” she asked, still afraid to move.

“No,” he chuckled.

Hermione felt air tickle her cheeks as the sled kept going.

“Stop the sled,” she said. She was tense and felt like she absolutely needed to jump on the spot, or her body would burst.

The sled stopped. She jumped off it, his arms letting her go. She turned to face him.

There was a long, jagged scar across his left cheek where the curse hit him, but he was there. He wore the same clothes and his hair was long. He was blushing.

She felt everything, three hundred and sixty-four sleepless nights and painful days bubble up to the surface and spill over her eyelids. She sobbed shakily and put her face in her hands. He stood up silently and wrapped himself around her. 

“Are you going to stay now?” She asked, clawing at his worn jacket, feeling a headache coming on.

“Forever,”: he said, kissing her.


End file.
